Aspects of PLM made lean, easy and affordable

Lean product development is the promise of CoCreate Software’s OneSpace 2006, which steers around PLM (product lifecycle management) and offers price and functionality for SMEs. Says William Gascoigne, CoCreate CEO: “CoCreate’s OneSpace 2006 product suite is the industry’s third generation of PLM – one that finally makes sense.” Fair or unfair, he describes the system as cutting waste by eliminating redundant tools. For example, while PLM can manage product definition, he argues that SMEs prefer to use Microsoft Office tools for that, and existing ERP for much of the rest. The result: OneSpace 2006 is aimed at bringing flexibility and efficiency to what lies between product definition and ERP. So it majors on providing a continuous build-and-check environment that’s the antithesis of stage-gate processes. It also features dynamic modelling and a responsive approach to dealing with late changes, so that users can make modifications more often and later than with history-based modelling. Beyond those, model information can be annotated and travel with it so that engineering designers don’t waste time on data re-entry for later processes like purchasing and production. Also there’s integrated model management, which orchestrates design processes and aids in information hand-offs. And if you’re wavering, it’s all built on Microsoft technologies, so open, standards-based and easy to get into.